Gunnlaugsson was the first world leader to be confronted directly about secret financial dealings detailed in the massive leak, abruptly walking out of a television interview with Sweden’s state broadcaster SVT on Sunday when asked to explain his own interest in Wintris, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands that had bonds in three Icelandic banks that collapsed in 2008.

Before Gunnlaugsson fled the room, under questioning by Johannes Kr. Kristjansson, founder of the crowd-funded investigative site Reykjavik Media, the first part of the interview was conducted in English by Sven Bergman of SVT. Those first four minutes — posted on YouTube by an Icelandic blogger, Lára Hanna Einarsdóttir — are worth watching in full for the skillful way Bergman got the prime minister to explain why his government so aggressively pursued tax dodgers.

“Well, it’s important to rebuild trust in Icelandic society, towards government, obviously, but also the financial system and our way of doing things,” Gunnlaugsson said. “We want to show that we are leaving no stone unturned.”

“In Iceland, like in most Nordic societies,” he added, “we attach a lot of importance to everybody paying his share. Society is seen as a big project that everyone needs to take part in, so when somebody is cheating the rest of society it is taken very seriously.”

That long buildup, which was also broadcast in full by Iceland’s RUV, made the culmination of the interview, when the prime minister refused to answer questions about not having disclosed his share in a shell company owned with his wife, all the more devastating.

Within hours of the revelations, Gunnlaugsson and Wintris had become the subject of jokes and memes online.

“The hipp­est ice cream shop in town, Val­dís, is of­fer­ing a new ice cream flavour today: Wintris,” the Iceland Monitor reported on Monday. “‘It’s sour with a dose of arrog­ance and we don’t particul­ar­ly recomm­end it,’ says an advert on the Val­dís Face­book site. The ice cream is a mixt­ure of lemon sor­bet and vanilla ice cream and is availa­ble with a tax deducti­on.”

Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer of Süddeutsche Zeitung, who first obtained the leaked documents from an unnamed whistleblower at the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealed on Sunday that Gunnlaugsson had failed to report his 50 percent stake in the shell company Wintris when he was elected to parliament in April 2009, an apparent breach of transparency regulations.

Gunnlaugsson denied any wrongdoing in his response to the German newspaper’s questions about this, employing a novel defense. “He argued that companies that don’t really do any business are not subject to the regulation,” SZ reported.

The German journalists also explained why the revelations could be particularly damaging to the prime minister, who was elected as a reformer:

On December 31, 2009, Gunnlaugsson sold his half of Wintris to his partner Anna Pálsdóttir. According to the contract found in the Panama Papers, the company – worth millions – was sold for one U.S. Dollar.

An affair involving an offshore company would be unpleasant for any head of government. But in Gunnlaugsson’s case it is a severe blow to his political integrity.

His rise to power began as part of “InDefence,” short for “In Defence of Iceland,” a grassroots political movement that was born after the three Icelandic banks collapsed. One of its slogans was “Icelanders are NOT terrorists,” which was a response to the British government’s controversial reaction to the Icelandic banking crisis. After the insolvent Landsbanki was nationalized in the fall of 2008, Britain demanded that Iceland guarantee the savings deposits of British nationals. When the Icelandic central bank refused to comply, the British government tried to get the money back by freezing Icelandic assets on the spot. To do this, Britain used counterterrorism laws. In the blink of an eye, Scandinavia’s fallen star suddenly found itself in the same category as al Qaeda.

Elected in 2009, Iceland’s center-left government attempted a compromise that would have included providing guarantees for British savings accounts. This enraged InDefence, and the movement’s supporters successfully rejected the government’s plans in three consecutive referendums on the matter. At the time, Gunnlaugsson seemed like a strong representative of the Icelandic people’s interests.

Insiders have said that Gunnlaugsson didn’t mention to his fellow InDefence campaigners that his family held bonds worth millions at the three bankrupt banks.

As the Reykjavík Grapevine noted, in dealing with the collapsed Icelandic banks, Gunnlaugsson has been “making decisions which directly affected creditors or, more bluntly, his wife’s company–clearly a conflict of interest.”

Speaking on Icelandic television, the prime minister defended his covert financial arrangements as legal, and dismissed the idea that he should resign because of a crowd filling Austurvöllur square outside parliament.

“The entire population won’s be at Austurvöllur,” he said in advance of the gathering. That was undoubtedly true, even if estimates put the size of the crowd in excess of 20,000, which is close to 10 percent of Icelanders. The police in Reykjavik confirmed that the demonstration was one of the largest in the country’s history, according to RUV.

“What would be the most natural and the right thing to do is that he resign as prime minister,” Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former WikiLeaks activist who represents the opposition Pirate party in parliament, told TheGuardian. “There is great demand for that in society; he has totally lost all his trust and believability.”

Gunnlaugsson’s determination to resist calls for his resignation might partly be explained by the fact that recent polling suggests that a snap election could well sweep the Pirates to power on a wave of anti-establishment anger.

The Panama Papers, a massive leak of more than 11 million documents, which has already implicated the leaders of other nations — including Russia, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan — will continue to unfold in the days ahead. Süddeutsche Zeitung has produced a fascinating video report on its effort to sift through and make sense of the documents, in collaboration with dozens of other news organizations.

Update | 7:47 p.m.: Thanks to a reader, Rory Monaghan, for explaining on Twitter that the brilliantly deadpan placard in the photograph at the top of this post is apparently also a reference to a less well-attended protest in the absurdist Irish sit-com “Father Ted.”

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I find this revelation to be smelly. That’s because it is presented in such a way as to make Vladimir Putin out to be the evil commie that fools like Obama et al say he is, while they continue with exceedingly aggressive moves against Russia. If Russia (with it’s THREE bases in foreign countries) was making the kind of moves toward the US (with it’s approximately 1000 bases in foreign countries) that it makes toward Russia (http://bit.ly/1RDkDh5), the entire US political class, including Bernie Sanders, would be calling for a mobilization of forces and declaring that the US is under attack.

Someone in the ICIJ should explain the emphasis they are placing on Vladimir Putin, which the White House – with it’s narraitve of evil commie Putin invading Crimea and Ukraine and justifying a robust response from Ukraine’s allies – must be ecstatic about, in the name of transparency.

Also, Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Mossack Fonseca just one of many companies that help tax evaders do their thing? If that’s the case, then won’t there be individuals and companies using tax havens that MF doesn’t deal with? And if that’s the case, We might wonder about the sudden interest in this very old evil (Remember Clearstream? – http://bit.ly/1q5cdod) and just how it happens that it revolves around this particular company.

Well once I heard about how the way the Panama Papers were being used, even though I don’t believe Putin is on the list, then I checked into what Wikileaks was saying and I went to their Twitter feed. If you go to their Twitter feed then they basically breakdown that the US Government, OCCRP, USAID and Soros are sponsoring reports in the media to demonize Putin. Check out their Twitter feed for yourself.

NO politician or world leader has the right to bank on any interests that go against the country they represent…that includes all offshore investments –
N. A. F. T. A. … HOW MANY CAUSED OUR MELTDOWN?.? WALL STREET?.?
CONGRESS’s INSIDER TRADING?.? the BANKS……foreclosures …. pensions losing while Wall Street got bonuses……CORRUPTION

Oh my, but this all makes the Edward Snowden’s leaks look like a meaningless trickle! The ramifcations will be interesting and there will be great amusement watching the MSM twist in the wind, like they are waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall on the heads of their wealthy overlords. Start popping the popcorn.

Snowden did his part. The public must follow through and arrest, prosecute, expose, and hang these criminals. The public can no longer use the excuse that we didn’t know or that we weren’t told. It’s the flipside of claiming “sovereignty”–one has to muster the courage to make decisions and to not evade one’s responsibilities. Henceforth, the defense of being an ignorant perpetrator will not fly, and certainly the public can no longer passively acquiesce before the self-proclaimed policymakers.

Thanks for the civics lesson, but it will take a great deal more of some information distribution before a majority that is strong enough gets it’s undies in bunch. i.e. ignorance is rampant in America. After all, we are free! Free I tell you, FREE. Free to be ignorant., U-S-A, etc etc etc. You can continue to blame the ignorant, but I say that it is worse than dumb to do so. Do your part, spread the word. Solidarity.

Well said, but the public is impotent, until that time the guillotine is reinstituted — the global elites, especially those in America, lover their head choppers in Saudi Arabia — time they had a first-hand introduction to their fantasies!

Snowden’s documents were far more significant and revealing; and apparently none of the Panama documents will actually be made available for public scrutiny. Although there are a lot of interesting revelations, calling it ‘the biggest leak ever’ is just marketing hype.

P.S. @ Vivek Jain: “The public must follow through and arrest, prosecute, expose, and hang these criminals.”

“Places like Switzerland and Bermuda are agreeing, at least in principle, to share bank account information with tax authorities in other countries. Only a handful of nations have declined to sign on. The most prominent is the U.S. Another, Panama, is at the center of a storm over tax evasion and global cash flight that broke out over the weekend.”

So there’s nothing to prosecute in the legal courts – just in the courts of public opinion – which in the United States, are controlled by the corporate media, more known for fawning over American billionaires and their apparatchiks in government rather than for exposing their offshore tax avoidance schemes.

And, curiously enough, despite ICIJ’s claim that the leak involves data about “140 politicians in 50 countries”, none of that data references American politicians or their supporters. Astonishing, isn’t it? It must be because American politicians and their supporters have no involvement in such shady practices . . .

Nothing more will be forthcoming on that front – the Director of ICIJ, Gerard Ryle, says that there will be no stories about any American politicians or about anyone linked to them.

So, apparently, this is of little concern? Move along, just go about your day, nothing to see here!

Prosecution in legal courts may not really amount to much. So far bread and circus has kept the people placated and satiated. It will depend on how the rest of the world’s people react once the news is fully digested. This could get ugly, very, very fast. I will say that it remains to be seen how the mass of world’s population react. But rest assured, the ignorant will not hurt you, it is those who know you might want to keep your eye on.

No it’s very interesting and very significant, but not a comprehensive overview of the world of secret shell corporations; it’s just a glimpse into that world. Also, a glimpse that someone else provided you, and shouldn’t you be curious about why no American politicians or their supporters have been outed?

In contrast, Snowden’s documents laid out the entire structure of the NSA mass surveillance program, which was the evidence that was needed to prove that Clapper and Hayden and other elements of the federal government had been lying to the American people, often under oath, about the scale of the NSA domestic surveillance program.

re: the assertion “You do realize that no laws were broken; everything done in the setting up of these shell corporations was entirely legal.”

That’s part of the problem right there: the abdication of civilians of the responsibility to declare what is right and what is wrong, the automatic assumption that just because the policymakers have said their actions are/were legal that no violation had occurred. We have to fix this deference that civilians give to our oppressors who invariably arbitrarily decide what is The Law and Who Is To Pay (always in favor of the 1% and at the expense of the 99%).

Justice begins when civilians find the courage to dissent, to fight back, to deny the legitimacy and authority that those who oppress us assume we have granted them.

The POTUS illegally shields torturers, bombs country after country, butchering thousands and thousands of our Sisters and Brothers, then turns to us with a megawatt smile, and with the backing of the media tells us that it’s all for national security.

When does it stop, or more accurately, when will civilians in the US stop this? What does it have to take before a public says “ENOUGH!”?

Well you could support politicians like Bernie Sanders who don’t take money from the oligarchs and support their candidacies – but didn’t you claim that was ‘fairy tale’ thinking? That’s a ludicrous argument; supporting such politicians, and helping to form public movements that support the same aims, is a very effective approach.

You could also encourage people in the government and corporate structures to follow in Snowden’s footsteps (and, perhaps in the footsteps of the Mossack Fonseca source) by revealing the scale of dishonesty and corruption within governments, academia, corporations, etc. That kind of information, when in the public domain, undermines the agenda of people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. Of course, one has to recognize that the *selective* release of such information can also serve such agendas. That’s why domestic mass surveillance of the population by the NSA, for example, for altering the outcome of elections by selective leaks, is such a threat to democracy.

But you seem to want to wave a magic wand and make it all better, some childish notion about ‘the public saying “ENOUGH!”‘ and voila, it’s all fixed. Just accept the Marxist class struggle dogma and you shall live in the socialist paradise of brotherly & sisterly love. I’ve heard endless repetitions of that line, usually delivered as a sermon, complete with the same religious fervor seen in any other dogmatic religious revival – it’s nonsense. Taken to its logical extreme, that perspective justifies every authoritarian agenda ever seen – be it religious, fascist or communist in nature – ISIS, Nazis, Khmer Rouge, all want to “arrest, prosecute, expose, and hang these criminals” who disagree with their views.

If you want to define people who hide their money from the tax collector in secret shell companies as criminals – then first you have to change the laws such that the practice is made illegal. Now if you want to instead say that you alone have the right to determine what is and is not illegal? Well, that’s fine for personal freedom issues like choosing to use ‘illegal’ drugs, I think, but are you really going to start attacking people who use such tax avoidance schemes in the streets with a club because the courts won’t do anything about it? Get ’em, Stalin.

Again, Sanders supports the Big Lie that US foreign policy is about national security. Sanders has stated on several ovcasions that the brutal regimes which collude with the US government should intensify their commitment to US aggression. He is not opposed to AFRICOM. (Do you even know what the US is doing throughout Africa?) He’s a fan of the totalitarian policy of butchering civilians with drones.

Also, it’s interesting but not surprising that you would support someone who is a standard bearer of American Empire. Sanders hasn’t criticized the Obama Administration’s right wing coup in Ukraine, or the US government’s collaboration with overt neonazis and fascists. On the contrary, he’s echoed the imperial threats against Putin and Russia.

Unfortunately, it’s not so simple. The ICIJ, who released the “Panama Papers,” is funded by people like George Soros, who himself is far more corrupt than most of the people who will be implicated (a few falsely, perhaps) by this massive information dump, which is over 1,500 times the size of Wikileaks. If George Soros has a hand in this operation (and he almost certainly does), there’s an underlying ulterior motive in using a tactic that would vindicate people’s suspicions of tax evasion and money laundering, to cover up a more insidious plot (e.g. The possible reincarnation of “Operation Condor,” which was covered by The Intercept not too long ago).

“this massive information dump, which is over 1,500 times the size of Wikileaks”

While people keep referencing the volume of data involved, the information content of that data is still unknown – shouldn’t some of the most vital documents be placed online, appropriately redacted as the most important Snowden documents were?

Second, nobody knows who the source was or what the agenda was – not even the reporters at ICIJ who took possession of the material. Let’s say the Snowden files had been delivered as an anonymous data dump with the only source contact being encrypted email exchanges – would they have the same impact? Would people wonder if they had been stolen and leaked by, for example, Chinese military hackers?

Furthermore, what about the fact that some portion of these Mossack Fonseca files had been sold to the German government some months before they were delivered to ICIJ? The only people who know if the files had been selectively edited to remove American politicians and their supporters would be Mossack Fonseca, and I doubt they’ll be talking about that.

Thus, this is not by any means a comprehensive overview of the world of shell corporations set up for tax avoidance, money laundering, covert action funding, etc. It’s a small window into that usually secret world, and so is of great interest, but that’s all it is – a small window – with the view given being controlled by the anonymous source.

Given that there are 11.46 million documents (not sure how many pages that would translate to, but it’s roughly 245 KB per document), it’ll take a while before all of these files are analyzed. The question of how long remains, and I would hazard a guess that optical character recognition (OCR) technology would be used to assist, for documents that are scanned/photocopied (if there are any, where they may be). Names will likely be cross-referenced across all these documents, with all that would entail, and then the investigation will pick up from there

We know nothing definitively of the original source, specifically (nor whether or not there was monetary compensation for these documents), but if an entity significantly influenced by George Soros got their hands on a bulk of these documents, the implications involved are extremely significant. What exactly they are remains to be seen, but at the very least, the potential here for blackmail and extortion is astronomical.

With the powerful entities involved, I doubt that Mossack Fonseca will be in a position to significantly undermine or compromise the standing of the entities involved, so I agree with you on this.

There is so much to be revealed – according to an infographic on this (http://static1.squarespace.com/static/56af517876d99c5d80401959/t/5702803c4c2f85f4f9c03d27/1459781716307/?format=750w), there’s info on “214,488 companies, trusts, and foundations” (I wonder if that would include the Clinton Foundation, btw), and “14,153 intermediaries such as lawyers and tax advisors who directed their clients to use Mossack Foseca’s services”. I don’t think it’s even sufficiently possible to subpoena all the documents and entities to be placed under scrutiny, by the requisite courts anytime soon – what has happened here is truly precedent-setting. Honestly, I don’t know exactly how the whole process of determining jurisdictions over this case will proceed (though I’d imagine that it will involve thousands of different courts, and ten of thousands of lawyers, judges, and clerks). It’s very likely, though, that much of what has been uncovered will never actually be revealed.

Iceland’s refusal to sell its entire population into debt slavery to keep some rich foreigners from losing money in a too-good-to-be-true investment was one of the rare spots of sanity in the entire Great Recession. And now you’re telling us it happened only because the PM had some shell corporation and a financial conflict of interest.

“If we didn’t have corrupt rulers, we wouldn’t have any good rulers at all.”

How long have we known that poverty is the result from stealing? How long have we known we are being robbed? This is nothing new, the names have changed is all. From the time man first stood up and walked this has been going on and to think that a government anywhere on the planet is going to fix it is insane. Even the past speaker of the house john orange skin worried about wealth redistribution going the wrong way, top down instead of the usual bottom up. Doesn’t anyone listen? Or read the news? Or think? For this to be a major news story is mind blowing, here in american it hasn’t even been hidden from view for the last 30 to 40+ years. Good old romney had all his money in a tax haven during his run for office, everyone knew it. Ain’t nuthin’ new here, ain’t nuthin’ to see, move along. It will never change, just the names 50, 60 years from now. Man does live by Greed Alone, forget the bread.

Precept: Wealth cannot be permitted in the face of poverty.
New American Code: S1:a The government of the people has the power to and shall effect the circulation and recirculation of cash and credit in the economy to prevent poverty and thus sustain good life support. Failure to do so by any measure of public objection is prosecuteable by the court of public protection. Any and all elected persons or appointed person not fulfilling this obligation shall be so charged and tried for dereliction of duty and upon conviction shall lose their office, license if any, and any future holding of public office.

The only thing that could truly change this is a complete remake, reformation of the banking industry. Elimination of all private based finance like the Federal Reserve. To be replaced by public banking. Until then all of this is little more than a Ponzi scheme, complete with smoke and mirrors, gnashing of teeth, renting of clothing and pulling out hair. But the Wealthy need not be too worried, it could be far worse, he11 it could be like the French Revolution

Let’s hope that,when the US names are revealed,the US media applies the same approach, and poses the same questions as the Icelandic media.,

Let’s hope that Wikileaks obtains a full copy of the leaked data and provide a searchable index.

Pressure must now be maintained on governments and tax authorities to address corrupted government systems which allow the elites and their corporations to continue avoiding paying taxes. Any found to have committed money laundering should be extradited to Panama for trial, and when convicted should be imprisoned for the crimes they committed there.

the Zions club which controls the courts is not legitimate as was the case of the democratic election in egypt. The charges must be done otherwise and persons elected for office shall support these charges of by and for the people that live.

Jesus opposed the corruption of power, money and lawyers and real Christians shall do the same.

Finance Capital runs the world to the benefit of the elites; nothing new here. David Cay Johnston explained how the elites corrupt the politicians at all levels to write the laws they want to make their skulduggery “Perfectly Legal”… the title of the book written 10 years ago by David Cay Johnston and a NYT best seller and an easy read. Things have only gotten worse since then. The unwashed don’t understand how they are being screwed but they know they are being screwed. It’s nothing in the west compared to the undeveloped world where wars are fomented and people starve and are run off their land by hedge fund corrupted politicians. Read Shaxtons “Treasure Islands” for a more complete explanation of how big offshore really is. Better yet, go down to your local bankster and ask her what the reserve is on your mortgage because the banksters legally loan you money they don’t actually have under the “fractional reserve” banking system and you pay interest for decades on the money they typed in the computer when you took it out. Yes Virginia, banksters create almost all the money in the world out of nothing and list YOU as an asset to justify it. It’s bad enough they can do it to you but they even do it to Nation States who rightfully can and should create the money supply. With the exception of Canada, all the developed worlds central banks are private banksters; yes the Fed, the Bank of England etc. Canada did exactly that, create it’s own money from the late 30s to 1974 interest free and built the modern nation with it. Did you know Washington had to suck up to British Banksters after beating them at war? Did you know, Thomas Jefferson died in debt to British Banksters? Did you know, Jackson was the last POTUS to take on the banksters? They won’t give it up;are you prepared to take it from them? They own your politicians, your police, your military; your media; good luck with that. Perhaps when your children are starving you might fight but I doubt it.

great post! “banksters create almost all the money in the world out of nothing”
precisely. The current currency has NOTHING to do with capitalism. Nothing at all. The current currency system is but a ponzi scheme of counterfeiters of value who rob America and Americans of productivity and future.

They will be charged with crimes against America and when found guily shall be imprisoned for life.

One has to applaud the Icelandic media for their clever use of the material, but there are some buts.

First, where does this fall in the spectrum of reliable anonymous sources? Given the interesting nature of the material, perhaps it is acceptable . . . if somewhat questionable, i.e. no face-to-face meeting with the reporters involved?

“A Suddeutsche Zeitung reporter named Bastian Obermayer says that the source contacted him via encrypted chat, offering some sort of data intended “to make these crimes public.” But the source warned that his or her “life is in danger,” was only willing to communicate via encrypted channels, and refused to meet in person. . . He notes that even now, he doesn’t know who the source actually is. “I don’t know the name of the person or the identity of the person,” Obermayer says. ”

Source: Wired, Andy Greenberg 04.04.16

The problem here is, was this a selectively edited leak? And does it give anything like an accurate overview of the entire offshore tax haven world (as compared to the Snowden NSA leak, which did give such an overview, according to NSA Director Michael Hayden and others)? And what about the domestic United States tax haven world? I.e., take Delaware:

Also, assuming that the list of 441 US clients of Mossack Fonseca (source: ZeroHedge) is going to be released by the investigative group, one wonders: will the American corporate media be asking the same kind of difficult questions of those clients that the Icelandic media did of theirs?

I have a minor disagreement. This is bigger than the Snowden’s revelation. We will find out how big it is by how the US media will treat it. I suggest that if it is as big as I think the MSM will do it’s best to limit it geographically to Europe, Iceland and Panama. God forbid that our Israeli-American Overlords be found guilty, after all they own the MSM.

TAX EVASION, inc.
Let’s say you have a business in the U.S. and you pay a lot of tax, business and or personal. Instead, you find a offshore workaround in say panama or the cayman islands or bermuda or turks & caicos. You then create/have a dba offshore and expense your u.s. income so you pay no u.s. income tax. Now to get the money back, your dba#1 makes an investment in your dba#2 – a financial investment company. Then dba#2 loans you money and or pays you dividends which are taxed at low or 0%.

This is called tax evasion with the enhanced charge of money laundering.

A translation of the portion in Icelandic would be great. Let’s find it.

. . . and dismissed the idea that he should resign because of a crowd filling Austurvöllur square outside parliament. “The entire population won’t be at Austurvöllur,” he said in advance of the gathering. That was undoubtedly true, even if estimates put the size of the crowd in excess of 20,000, which is close to 10 percent of Icelanders.

I’d be willing to bet he will resign, or be removed.

I’m pretty sure that any US president, if 30 million people marched on Washington calling for his resignation, would call the Marines and the helicopter — and televise his resignation speech from an undisclosed location.

As i suspected, the zion club that runs the USD currency monopoly and markets pays politicians to be loyal to them. You need to understand something that is critical to your future and that of your children and generations yet.

The object is ownership, not income from the circulation economy. Ownership belongs to the valuation economy and valuations are determined by interest rates – mainly the U.S. Fed which they own.

Understand that once one has more moneythan they need, all that matters is keeping it and being able to sell the scraps for a higher price by being able to loan money to the buyer. (there are 2 types of buyers; club members who need lower interest and retail which relies on gambling on future price inflation.)

The economy is a conjob and the efforts by the zion club is to OWN IT ALL. To do that they need political support to pass such things as trade agreements, the TPP and all the crap they can shovel onto populations.

The zion cult has nothing better to do with their “sky high” lifestyles than to rule the planet economically. They come first, everyone else comes last. They worship money and power and have absolutely no real regard for democracy, fairness or goodness. THEY ARE THIEVES.

The current currency monopoly by the Zions club is a print-pledge-loan scam and runs any country like a pawn shop – you pledge what you create and if you dont pay the debt or pass it off, the printers take ownership. IT’S A MAJOR CON.

All economic problems would come to a halt with the removal and replacement of that criminal system with one that recognizes circulation, free and clear, maintenance, and major penalties for greed, deprivation, hording. There is such a plan near completion and unless it is adopted, Trump would be right in stating a major recession looms because it does.

The federal reserve has been subsidizing the valuation economy (a complete fraud) for years now and as soon as their short term rates hit .1%, run because their long term rates are a complete sham.

I have very little faith in our political leadership. And what I mean by that is I suspect 90% of them are guilty of crimes that would land them in prison for more than 10 years. I also don’t think that is likely to ever happen.

Look at what happened to James Clapper. He lied to Congress under oath about whether or not the US was spying on its citizens in mass. He received no time in prison and a promotion. In the meantime how many countless citizens, neighbors, brothers, sisters, ect have gone to prison for doing much less.

Clapper is not a patriot. There is no excuse for what he did. And even if there is, its the appearance of a crime that is most damaging to the Justice Departments reputation. But lets be honest, no one can really believe that the Justice Department has been named appropriately anyway.

I’ll sum it all up. I fought a war for the US once. Why should I ever serve my country in any capacity ever again when it is so obviously corrupted at the top levels of leadership? That is rhetorical. The answer is obvious.

Good information, however you are being too kind in writing: “that they have no concept of how difficult life is for millions of Americans.”

It is not that they are too far removed it is that they simply do not care about the masses.They are picked by the elite and completely corrupted by and for the satisfaction of the elite’s demented lust for greed and power.

Jefferson said “Every generation needs a new revolution” and ours is long overdue.

Seeing 10% of Iceland’s population out in the streets may be a harbinger of things to come, perhaps a new OCCUPY that not only camps out but moves out the banal, so others can move in to serve not just offering hope, but bringing justice upon the betrayers and their funders thus clearing the path for a life with dignity for the masses.